Em got recruited into a new role by a former colleague who promised her real support. For a while, it was great. Then the support quietly disappeared. She asked for it. She pushed for it, clearly and professionally. Eventually her boss was let go, and she got his job.

She thought that was the end of the story. New boss, clean slate, and this time she'd name what she needed before she even said yes to the role.

Six months later, she was standing in the exact same spot.

Here's what gets missed in a story like that: Em didn't do anything wrong. Advocating clearly for herself is a genuinely good move. It had worked for her before, in other rooms, with other people. The problem wasn't the strategy. The problem was that she kept reaching for the same one, in a new situation, without checking whether it still fit.

Think about climbing a mountain. The route that gets you to base camp is not the route that gets you to the summit. Different terrain, different gear, different pace. Nobody calls that a failure of the first route. It did its job. It's just not the job that's in front of you anymore.

Most of us have an Em moment somewhere in our own story. A way of operating that worked so well, for so long, that we stopped questioning it. We just assumed it would keep working, because it always had.

So let me ask you directly: what's the strategy you're still running, even though the terrain changed a while ago?

This is the actual work of coaching. Not pushing harder on a strategy that's already stopped working. Not a new framework to bolt onto the old one. It's getting specific, with someone who isn't inside your pattern, about which route you're actually on right now, and whether it still matches the mountain in front of you.

If Em's story landed somewhere familiar, that's not a coincidence. That's information.

Ready to find your next route?

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This Week’s Journal Prompts

• Where in your life are you still using the strategy that got you to base camp, even though you're trying to reach the summit?

• What is it costing you to keep reaching for that same approach, even when it's stopped working?

• If you're honest, when did you first notice the terrain had changed, even if you kept moving the same way anyway?

• What would it look like to find a "different vehicle" in one specific area of your life right now, not someday, but this week?

• Whose voice or input would help you see your own pattern more clearly than you can see it alone?